Of playboys and penthouses

Last night I was listening to the radio and caught an interview with Steven Watts who has just written a new biography about Hugh Hefner. During the course of the interview, Watts brought up Penthouse Magazine which became a competitor to Playboy in the 70s.

I obviously know what a penthouse is, but I realized that I had never connected the name of the magazine with the top floor of a building, or more particuarly, a high-end apartment located there.

My first association of the word "penthouse" was with the magazine (ah, puberty), and when I later learned about penthouses as somewhere where people live, I never connected it up with my earlier denotation for the term. Clearly the magazine was named after the dwelling to connote exclusivity, but since I first knew Penthouse, there was no reason to hook it up to penthouses when I later learned what they were.

And now I understand their logo (a key)!

Funny how our minds work... :-)

Here's a CNN interview with Hefner in which he discusses Watts' book, Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.